Evidence of meeting #110 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was wheelchair.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Board Chair, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
CNIB was consulted in a very limited way. We didn't get to review the final plan and what the airline ultimately decided to do.
I think there's another point that's worth mentioning here. The plans that the airlines have developed are based on current state; they don't speak at all to the idea of new technologies that could be introduced. For example, there was a technology I saw in Los Angeles, a mobility aid for people who are blind that is battery-powered and guides us around objects. I can tell you that, if I were to take that onto an airplane today, they wouldn't have a clue what to do.
I think that if we're going to deal with accessibility plans, we need to have the government develop standards for what should be in them, but they also need to be forward looking.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Mr. Fenton.
Next we have Mr. Badawey.
Mr. Badawey, the floor is yours five minutes, please.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I do want to thank all the witnesses today for their testimony and their participation in this study.
I'll say firstly and bluntly that the outcome of this study is that it becomes no longer the responsibility of persons with disabilities to accommodate airlines and airports. It is now the time to put that responsibility on the airlines and airports to accommodate persons with disabilities, period.
With that said, in committee, the testimony does not belong to us. The analysts don't hear us; they hear you. What comes out in the draft report to members of the committee are those thoughts and recommendations from you. My attempt, today is going to be to draw out from you what those thoughts and recommendations are.
With that said, I have one question. You're at the manufacturer. You're in their building, and you're building that airplane. How do you expect those airlines, which become the owners of those airplanes, to accommodate you with respect to how those airplanes are built?
We recognize, when we go into public spaces, that accommodations are made for people with disabilities, whether it's a restaurant, a public building or here in Parliament on the Hill. We all recognize that airlines—especially airlines—are far from that responsibility. How do we bring them up to 2024 with respect to accommodating you on airplanes?
I'll start off with Mr. Brault.
Senior Consultant, As an Individual
To begin with, it starts with a phone call to say, "I want to fly and I want to use your particular service", but to your question, sir, to actually design the physical plane itself, it starts right at the entrance.
I don't know how many of you notice this when you go onto planes, but the next time you go onto a plane you'll notice this. The planes don't actually connect with those particular areas right away. There's an actual piece of metal that goes in there, and I can tell you I've been stuck at that halfway point a number of times, and all I see is literally what looks to me like a 20-storey drop.
So we need a better design for getting into the plane.
The other thing that happens—and I can't tell you how many times I've been stuck in this and it has taken 20 to 30 minutes to get me out of this situation—is I'm stuck in something called the "eagle lift", where I'm in-between the kitchen area and the doorway before I can go down the hallway of the plane.
Now we've got to remember that planes are designed to be small and they only have x amount of space, but we need to get the right engineers and the right people from my community to come to have the conversation about how to design better spaces to get in.
Remember that I said that 40% of the time I've had issues? I would say that in the 60% of the time that I had no issues, I was able to get in my manual wheelchair right up to the first row of seats and transfer right in easily—and that has been in the bigger planes. With the smaller planes, you can't do that.
Chair, Disability Without Poverty
I think we need to flip the paradigm on what we think air travel is. I think we have moved to something that is ultra-low cost. As Mr. Fenton said, they've even removed—I'm sure we all remember it—the large tight rail that would be above us.
We need to flip the paradigm so that we're not thinking of air travel as something where absolutely every plane has to be completely full, every space has to be completely filled, because we are thinking about the bodies that are on those planes and how we're going to accommodate them.
It looks like the time is up.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
No, that's good. I'm just trying to get all four of you in.
Board Chair, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
Thank you. I'll be really brief.
For blindness, there are some minor structural things that could be done, like I said, with the labels for the rows and making sure that the entertainment system is fully accessible. We don't have the same kinds of structural barriers that other people with mobility disabilities have. My issue is more with services rather than structure in most cases, so I'll let my colleagues who have more to say about design speak to these issues.
Liberal
Vance Badawey Liberal Niagara Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Fenton, and by the way, to the witnesses, there's nothing stopping you from putting written submissions in too, so that if we miss something, you can send those in for the analysts to take into consideration for our final report.
Ms. Ziv.
Chief Executive Officer, AccessNow
If Air Canada can design a contraption that allows for safe storage and flight of an equestrian program, as in actual horses that arrive in the same condition as when they boarded the planes, I believe there is a way to protect mobility devices today before we get to retrofitting or redesigning entire aircraft. It starts there. Every single mobility device needs to be stored safely, protected properly, and not be treated or labelled as luggage. It's possible. They can do it for other things. They can do it for wheelchairs, and yes, the ultimate goal is to be able to allow people with disabilities to maintain their independence and health.
There are many people with disabilities who cannot be out of their wheelchairs at all, which means they are not travelling at all. There are solutions in the market today. You could even look at the pilot project that Delta is doing to integrate a locking mechanism where a wheelchair can take the place of a seat on board. It's possible, but it starts with enforcement and with not seeing this as a courtesy, but as a right to maintain a person's independence.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Ms. Ziv.
Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to turn to Mr. Lupien again to ask him a question in connection with the last interventions by Mr. Badawey and the other witnesses around the table.
Today, we've talked a lot about aircraft design and construction. Of course, we'd like to have aircraft designed with disabled people in mind, so that there are fewer problems in this area.
In your recent experience, do such aircraft already exist? Have you had any experience of them? Are there any working models on the market already, or would you have to start from scratch to build one?
Chair, Confédération des organismes de personnes handicapées du Québec
The first example I could give you is that we worked with Via Rail, in Quebec, to adapt trains. It worked very well. We even worked with the manufacturers. We talked to each other. We managed to have accessible trains, in addition to very good service.
As far as airplanes are concerned, there was an American company that adapted very well to people with disabilities, as I said earlier, but unfortunately it went bankrupt.
Can airlines consult us? Yes. Can aircraft manufacturers consult us? Yes, but do they really want to? I wonder.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
I think the answer is rather clear. We can see that there's a lot of work to be done.
Ms. Ziv, you spoke earlier about the importance of compiling data. I'm not familiar with the situation as regards data compilation. Can you tell us more about this? What would it change, in concrete terms, if we had data on the problematic situations experienced by disabled people, for example?
Chief Executive Officer, AccessNow
Currently, the data we have is very minimal and relies on the willingness of airlines to actually document and provide that when requested, if they choose to, and the reports we have, the complaints from the CTA.... I know first-hand that the majority of people I've engaged with who have disabilities don't know what to do when they're in a situation and often don't even file a report because they don't think there's any point. They don't think they're protected. They don't think the rights they have currently are documented in any way that will actually result in a proper resolution.
We need data that automatically documents every single time a mobility device is damaged or lost. Currently, we are only hearing the stories that reach the news, which is not a proper transparent accountability system.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Ms. Ziv.
Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.
Next we have Mr. Bachrach.
The floor is yours for two and a half minutes, please.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm interested in this idea of extending rights as we understand them as applying to peoples' bodies to include mobility devices. I think the testimony we've heard about how integral mobility devices are to people's lives very clearly makes the case for why that's reasonable.
From a legal perspective, I'm wondering—and perhaps this is for Mr. Brault and Mr. Reznick—whether any thought has been given to how this might be achieved. It's very difficult to crack open the charter, so outside of that, are there ways that could be reflected in law or in regulation that would have a similar effect?
Senior Consultant, As an Individual
Yes. Simply put, we have the Accessible Canada Act. We also have what Maayan Ziv is hitting on with the standards community designing standards that will ensure that people and organizations respect our equipment in the way our bodies are respected.
Let's be honest, because at the same time the ACA could be amended or added to. There's a whole section just on transportation, and we can add the simple fact that the accessibility equipment that individuals use on a daily and functional basis can have and should have the same human rights that I appear to. This way, it would put a little bit more into the legal framework that if something happens to my equipment, I get to put in a charter rights complaint.
Again, no, I've never heard this argument before. When I was showing up today, this is one of the ideas I wanted to present that we should look at. I believe that once organizations like Air Canada and WestJet start understanding that our equipment has the same rights we do as human beings, they will start dramatically changing the way they deal with our equipment and ensuring that when we get to point B, our equipment is there, is functional and still works.
You've heard this from several key people here today. At the end of the day, all we're asking for is for our rights to be observed and that when we buy the service to travel, we have the same consideration everybody else has. We have this one little additional thing to ask for, which is making sure that our legs, our equipment, whatever we use is there and in working order so that we're not damaged or hurt wherever we're about to go.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you, Mr. Brault.
Thank you, Mr. Bachrach.
I'm sorry. Was there somebody who wanted to add something?
Staff Lawyer, ARCH Disability Law Centre
Yes. I was wondering if I could add just a quick, five-second point.
Liberal
Staff Lawyer, ARCH Disability Law Centre
I just wanted to outline that this is already the law. We don't require the charter. We have the ATPDR, which clearly states that airlines must be compliant with the Canadian Human Rights Act. We can go through that process in order to ensure accessibility.
I just wanted to make it clear that this process still exists. It just needs to be properly implemented.
